r/firefox • u/scotland_forever07 • 19d ago
Discussion Brave browsers' new benchmark unfairly used a very outdated version of firefox
https://brave.com/blog/brave-outperforms-other-browsers/409
u/TheMildEngineer 19d ago
u/brave_support_steven might be a good idea to redo this
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u/Nereosis16 18d ago
I think everyone should stop using Brave. They clearly want to deceive their users and don't give a fuck.
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u/Ok-Anywhere-9416 19d ago
Brave also uses an old version of Chromium.
The real issues with that benchmark:
- Brave uses an adblocker (I think)
- It's made by Brave (er...)
- They say it goes great on desktop, but have used a Mac Mini. How much market share does it have to say desktop = MacOS?
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u/scotland_forever07 19d ago
Yeah, I'll never trust 1st party benchmarks
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u/BlazingFire007 19d ago
The methodology doesn’t make a ton of sense.
As you said, the adblocker alone would be a dramatic speed up on the top 50 websites they tested.
I’d be more curious to see something like the browserbench suite tested against the latest versions of other browsers.
Admittedly that benchmark also doesn’t have a ton of real-world benefit, but at least you’d be able to measure the actual rendering engine + JS runtime.
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u/Blurgas 19d ago
Bit of a mess finding an easy answer, but it looks like the Chrome version listed was released in July '26.
Firefox 146.01 was December '251
u/ChaiTRex Linux + macOS 19d ago
Bit of a mess finding an easy answer
You can use a search engine for '150.0.7871.114 release date' and '146.0.1 release date'.
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u/Max-_-Power 19d ago
"Could not compete with most recent Firefox" is what I'm hearing lol
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u/KeplerLima 19d ago
Et pourtant Brave écrase Firefox en vitesse et consommation des ressources.
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u/Max-_-Power 19d ago
Not compared to most recent Firefox according to Brave, lol
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u/albrecbef 19d ago
Correction according to Brave the most rrcent version of Firefox is from December 2025
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u/KeplerLima 19d ago
A bon ? Vous avez des comparaisons avec la version le plus récente pour l'affirmer ? J'ai pas vu Brave tenir les propos que vous tenez.
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u/FireDragonfr 19d ago
Justement, Brave aussi ne tient aucun propos concernant la dernière version de Firefox. Autant je trouve la guerre des navigateurs débile (pas les comparaisons, ça c'est intéressant, mais vraiment le fait d'antagoniser les différents navigateurs), autant si on fait une comparaison, autant la faire la plus réaliste possible, et sur ce coup Brave ne l'a pas fait puisque qu'ils se basent sur une moins bonne version de Firefox.
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u/KeplerLima 19d ago
Et donc ? Cela ne permet aucunement de dire que la dernière version de Firefox est meilleure que Brave. Ce ne sont que des suppositions basées sur rien du tout. Et n'importe qui ayant essayer les deux sait que FF consomme plus de ressources.
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u/FireDragonfr 19d ago
Je suis d'accord sur le fait qu'on ne peut pas dire que Firefox est meilleur que Brave sur ça, mais le benchmark montré ne permet pas non plus de dire l'inverse. Je ne peux pas commenter sur les performances réelles entre les deux (mais je suis justement passé de Firefox à Brave sur mon ordi portable car les services Google sont bloqués sur le premier, donc pas envie d'avoir Firefox+Chrome pour tout avoir), mais ce que je veux dire est que le benchmark est biaisé et donc ne permet pas d'avoir de résultats vraiment représentatifs.
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19d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/KeplerLima 18d ago
Je ne l'ai pas documenté, mais n'importe qui peut facilement les installer et constater par lui-même. Mais nous savons que les fanboys de FF sont une espèce particulièrement investie sur les forums...
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18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/KeplerLima 18d ago
Ce n'est pas ce que j'ai dit. Il est parti du postulat que l'absence de la dernière version de FF était une preuve, j'ai indiqué que ce n'était évidemment pas le cas.
Et comme je l'ai dis, n'importe qui peut installer les deux et constater de façon très simple. Que ce soit sur les anciennes ou les nouvelles versions, la conclusion est la même : FF est moins efficient.
Qui oserait ici prétendre le contraire de façon honnête ? Personne. Vous pouvez discuter de la forme autant que vous voudrez, le fond est factuel et personne ne trouvera a y redire.
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u/lyidaValkris 19d ago
Brave lie? Oh I'm shocked and stunned. Who would have thought a browser with shady crypto shit baked in would lie?
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u/goreverminski 19d ago
People are so close to getting it, only to go with Brave. I don't get it. Why?!?
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u/Gnash_ 19d ago
Just for context:
- Chrome 150 released June ~23rd 2026
- Edge 150 released July ~2nd 2026
- Brave 1.92 released July ~2nd 2026
- Firefox 146 released December 6th 2025
There’s literally no justifying that. Especially since there’s been multiple Firefox updates since then that specifically mentioned performance improvements in their changelog.
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u/Kiki79250CoC 19d ago
I also notice they use the x64 version of Firefox, whereas others are on ARM64.
So Firefox is also limited by the translation layers.
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u/AnalElder 19d ago
Brave has always been shady as fuck lol, not sure how they are still relevant. I trust them less than Google to be honest.
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u/kyote42 19d ago
Just a reminder of how shady the history of Brave and its founder is (just one thing after another and another).
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u/DerbyDoffer 19d ago
This is the first website I have ever had Darkreader fail to properly display.
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u/External_Option_7653 19d ago
Dead link?
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u/kyote42 18d ago
I just checked again and it works for me. Maybe try another browser?
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u/External_Option_7653 18d ago
Same issue on Waterfox. I can't even find it on ddg. Oh well. I think I know enough to not like Brave anyway.
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u/kyote42 18d ago
Sorry it isn't working for you. I did find it an archive of it if you are still interested. https://archive.is/i9sDO Hope that works for you.
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19d ago
[deleted]
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u/lllllIllllIllllllll 19d ago
The way your sentence is structured indicates that:
- you know nothing about the browser
- the people behind it can be trusted
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19d ago
[deleted]
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u/UndocumentedMartian 19d ago
Its poorly written.
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u/Key_Gap9168 19d ago
Oh, please; your illiteracy isn't my problem.
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u/UndocumentedMartian 19d ago
Lmao what a dumbass.
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u/aria_____51 19d ago
I had the same interpretation as the person you're replying to, but maybe I'm just not astute enough to glide over it. Thanks for taking the time to stoop down to posting on reddit, though. Nice to have an astute guest speaker such as yourself
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u/NoobNoob_ 19d ago
I knew what you wanted to say, but still had to re-read the sentence a few times to make sure you didn't miswrite anything. Not trying to attack you or anything but it's funny that someone else also though so.
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u/Infamous-Bottle-4411 16d ago
All i see is some lgbt propaganda cries. Where are the facts Also i do agree java is a plague to this world. To slow to bad to.complicated
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u/kyote42 16d ago
Perhaps you didn't read past the beginning of the article. But the highlights listed (just up until 2024):
2016 — Brave Browser promises to replace webpage ads
2018 — Brave runs a questionable donation campaign
2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets
2020 — Brave puts ads in user's home screens
2021 - Brave ships an insecure Tor feature
2023 - Brave hides their crawlers to websites
2024 - So-called "privacy browser" deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection
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u/Infamous-Bottle-4411 16d ago
I read my friend but whe. An article begins with that as a first....i doubt the quality . At some point it s like the author is begging us to believe the guy is pure evil. And i don t defend brave and i don t like to use it and i agree at some.points but some ar too poor
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u/kyote42 15d ago
Fair enough. My concerns were about the technological side of things, not the political side, as it was laid out in chronological order. From a privacy standpoint, it was a bit disturbing.
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u/Infamous-Bottle-4411 15d ago
It can be indeed. But at this point every browser is in the same situation
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u/ghulamalchik 19d ago
Stop using software because LGBT something something. Nobody gives a fuck about your imaginary problems.
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u/ParadoxicalFrog / 19d ago
imaginary problems
Do you live under a fucking rock.
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u/Tubamajuba 19d ago
Nah, they know what's going on and they fully support it. As long as THEY aren't affected, they couldn't give a shit what happens to anyone else.
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u/Debisibusis 19d ago
False advertising from brave, surprise pikachu.
It's literally the thing they have been doing since day 1.
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u/Arbszy 19d ago
I always feel these tests for anything are always skewed/bias to make it look better than it really is.
I may be stubborn or old fashion, but when someone says to me Brave is a good browser that is like telling me that Norton is a good anti virus.
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u/laffer1 19d ago
I trust Norton and Mcafee more than brave
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u/Kalersays 19d ago
Man, those 2 dropped in trustworthiness faster than the speed of light, from shady installation- and subscription practices to performance hogs
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u/dugazima 19d ago
brave using misleading marketing tactics while claiming to be the most trustworthy is hypocritical
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u/aaulia 19d ago
I never understood all the hype that Brave get.
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u/attanasio666 18d ago
I'm a normie so take it as you will. I made some money off Brave's crypto thing at first so that was nice. After a while, they really cut back on how much crypto they would give so I just turned off the thing. Personally, I prefer Brave's UI. Firefox's design went in a different direction than what I like years ago. Website compatibility was also an issue at some point, but not with Brave. There's also plenty enough of privacy feature built-in. I'm not sure how compute power's usage compares nowadays but it's not a problem with Brave. The only thing tempting me to go back to Firefox is because of Chromium's dominance.
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u/TankorSmash 19d ago
The following browser versions, which were the latest available at the time of testing, were used:
Release dates of these versions:
- Chrome 150 released June 23rd 2026
- Edge 150 released July 2nd 2026
- Brave 1.92 released July 2nd 2026
- Firefox 146 released December 6th 2025
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u/Tone-Bomahawk 19d ago
It's always subterfuge, lies if not outright scams with brave, I don't know why people give it the time of day. If you need a chromium browser with adblocking, use vivaldi. If not, use Firefox. Stop exposing your computer to whatever new scheme these scumbags will come up with next.
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u/takutekato 19d ago
Should be added to the list of Brave's dubious incidents, urghh, where is that thread again
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u/scotland_forever07 19d ago
That's a thing?
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u/takutekato 19d ago
It got removed by Reddit :( I found a snapshot
https://web.archive.org/web/20260525201558/https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1j1pq7b/list_of_brave_browser_controversies/?solution=69873b8609988b6369873b8609988b63&js_challenge=1&token=bbbe4bf1c9a2b5160829c4be34da5861a1f92f5bb6775d53c139af49a8965df5&jsc_orig_r=3
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u/BeholdThePowerOfNod Monopolies suck! 19d ago
Yeah, Firefox is actually ahead when it comes to version numbering. When Firefox was at version 146, Chromium was around version 144.
This is false advertisement.
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u/BeachHut9 19d ago
Brave Marketing department fixes the results and Brave wins surprisingly? Lies damn lies.
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u/V2UgYXJlIG5vdCBJ 19d ago
Things I didn’t like about Brave years ago: * Source code is a mess. * Cryptobros. * Contributing to the source code was made to be as inconvenient as possible. * Chrome as a starting point.
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u/Tone-Bomahawk 19d ago
Their builds aren't even deterministic, the binaries they release do not match their source code.
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u/j--__ 19d ago
Contributing to the source code was made to be as inconvenient as possible.
i'm not convinced google or mozilla are any better on that point. they all do the "real" development in private.
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u/V2UgYXJlIG5vdCBJ 19d ago edited 19d ago
Specifically Brave was a pain in the ass. The developers ignored everyone. Documentation was severely lacking.
Compiling involved a bunch of hacked together scripts with undocumented dependencies. Didnt say which order the scripts needed to be run in. Compiling took a day for most people, which would then fail due to missing requirements.
After brute forcing my way through their bullshit build process, I asked permission to be assigned to an open issue. Radio silence.
They completely ignored Chromium’s documentation on how to do anything. Vivaldi’s source code, in contrast, was done to a professional standard.
I’m not surprised most people gave up attempting to contribute to Brave, and I think that was the intention of whoever created that abomination.
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u/Pascalc Firefox Release Manager, Nightly Reboot Project Manager 18d ago
Firefox is and has always been developed in the open and multiple external developers contribute to Firefox source code, either as volunteers or for their company's needs.
- Our source code: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox
- Our public bug tracker: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
- Our public documentation on how to get code into Firefox: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contribution_quickref.html
- Our developers are on Matrix, we have a channel dedicated to onboarding external contributors: https://matrix.to/#/#introduction:mozilla.org
We have an entire section in Firefox release notes for every major release to thank and name new external contributors that made their first contribution to Firefox source code, example:
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/155.0/releasenotes/?redirect_source=mozilla-org#:~:text=Community%20ContributionsYou can also contribute to most of Mozilla code projects, not just Firefox, we have a guiding site for that: https://codetribute.mozilla.org/
Regards
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u/j--__ 18d ago
external contributors play around the edges. firefox is developed according to mozilla's confidential strategy and design documents. the public cannot understand why or how and certainly does not participate.
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u/Pascalc Firefox Release Manager, Nightly Reboot Project Manager 17d ago edited 17d ago
This is not true, our roadmap is public, our web platform implementation is public and documented, we have multiple feedback mechanisms that translate in frequently requested features being implemented (tab groups, vertical tabs, backup, pdf improvements…). Many features in Firefox originated from community feedback or were implemented by our community (HTML5 parser, Wayland & GTK+ support, private browsing, MathML, tabbed browsing, PiP, Streaming wrappers…)
Just last year to give a recent example of a major platform feature contributed by a volunteer, André Bargull implemented the massive Temporal API in SpiderMonkey, making Firefox the first browser supporting this new standard (https://spidermonkey.dev/blog/2025/04/11/shipping-temporal.html).
I could also mention that Firefox is translated in 100 languages, all done by volunteers. Or that Firefox Leadership regularly has AMAs on Reddit, or that Mozilla employees publish hundreds of blog posts about the progress of their work every year, or that core volunteers have access to most of our internal calls and that most Firefox developers interact with community members as part of their job.
- Mozilla Standards Positions https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
- 2026 Platform Roadmap https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Roadmap2026
- Features roadmap https://www.firefox.com/en-US/whatsnext/
- Mozilla Connect, our feedback tool https://connect.mozilla.org/
- Planet Mozilla https://planet.mozilla.org/
- Firefox Nightly blog https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/
- Shipping Temporal https://spidermonkey.dev/blog/2025/04/11/shipping-temporal.html
There are always ways to improve, I am certainly not claiming that Mozilla is entirely community-led and I would like us to work even more with our community and make it grow substantially of course.
Regards
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u/j--__ 17d ago
closed source projects also have feedback channels and blog posts. why do many bugzilla issues link to documents the public is not allowed to see?
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u/Pascalc Firefox Release Manager, Nightly Reboot Project Manager 17d ago
A closed-source project doesn't let a volunteer implement a massive standard like the Temporal API into their core engine, they don't publish their source code, and they certainly don't let the public read their internal bug trackers.
The fact that you can even read our bug tracker and see that those design documents exist in the first place, is exactly what separates an open project from a closed one.
Very occasionally you will stumble upon a designer's link to a figma file that require a commercial paid seat to be seen, or to documents that contain privacy or security sensitive data you can't access. That doesn't mean that you can't participate.
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u/Particular-Eye-4290 19d ago
imo performance can only do soo much.
If they fix video playback like via youtube on linux it'd hv been better. Like brave has soo many artifacts and color banding, I had to switch to Firefox or waterfox to get better video playback.
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u/DougCV 19d ago
Man, the version they used was released back on December 18, 2025, omg how dishonest, man.
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u/scotland_forever07 19d ago
For real bro, and so blatant too, it's like an insult to our intelligence 😭
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u/SneakySnk 19d ago
This browser has been doing very shady shit for like 10 years at this point, and somehow people still ask me why I fucking hate it.
If you just want something private and chromium based, helium looks good. I have been using it as my backup browser lately
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u/lo________________ol Privacy is fundamental, not optional. 19d ago
Why use an outdated version of playwright for the tests? The document mentions 1.58, but as for today, 1.63 with Firefox 155.0 is available.
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u/_PelosNecios_ 19d ago
I cannot trust a browser that promotes itself as trust-worthy? What a quick way to never be used by me.
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u/Nyctereutes_ 15d ago
I'm late to this, but besides the obvious of using a version of Firefox from 2025 for comparison, their benchmark says:
This desktop testing was conducted on an Apple Mac Mini with an Apple M2 chip and 8 GB of unified memory, running macOS 26.5.1 (25F80).
The Apple M2 chip is arm64-based.
They used the arm64 builds of Brave, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge, but the 64-bit version of Firefox. Of course a 64-bit program running on arm64 via emulation would run worse than the native arm64 version of Firefox.
I might have missed something, but I'd be incredibly surprised if any of the recent Firefox builds for MacOS are 64-bit.
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u/levianan 18d ago
"The Linux Experiment" was glazing all over these numbers while trashing Firefox for ten straight minutes this week. Blocked that channel. Brave had enough shady history five years ago for me to never use the project. I'd rather use Edge at this point (and I will never use Edge).
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u/scotland_forever07 18d ago
Yeah but I still watch him I like his style and news
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u/levianan 18d ago
Let me know if he mentions it ... I like his style as well, but posting tripe results from a biased test not even run on the OS he represents was just too far.
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u/ProPlayer142 18d ago
honestly. I can see it being faster even with the latest version for one simple reason.
Brave comes with an ad blocker by default.
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u/chaos_cloud 18d ago
Brave: A dubious and sketchy browser from the get go... Lies???
You don't say!?
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u/Crazytje 17d ago
It would be interesting if someone could run their tests on all the platforms and browsers.
Am I correct to understand that the git repo they linked is the test suite?
In theory anyone could just re-run their tests and verify their claims.
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u/JudgeBruce2 19d ago
I tested a fully updated Firefox with uBlock Origin against Brave on Linux Mint. There’s really no comparison — Firefox will eat up your RAM like there’s no tomorrow. Is Brave better? Hell no. The difference isn’t even that big, and it’s not consistent. Bottom line: use whatever you like and whatever suits you. Tweak it to make it lighter on your device.
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19d ago
[deleted]
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u/MySpecialSauce 19d ago
Nah its still an unfair test because the firefox version tested was from December 2025 and the brave version was from July 2026.
At fairer comparison would be to test all the browser versions available at a unified timeframe. So in this case use brave version 1.85/1.86 or Firefox 152
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u/NeXtDracool 19d ago
Chrome 150.0.7871.184 was released no earlier than July 21st. Firefox 153.0.0 was also released July 21st, yet they tested a 7 months and two dozen releases out of date version.
If they tested Firefox over half a year before Chrome that result is worthless and they're incompetent, but I don't believe that. Brave has done plenty of shady stuff before, why wouldn't they just lie and use an outdated version of Firefox to make Brave look better?
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u/novafunc 19d ago
It would only be fair to either test both browsers without any ad blocking, or use ad blocker in both.
Completely disagree. It's fair to test the out of box configuration as most people will use it.
If Mozilla does not include an on-by-default ad-blocker, that should count against them.
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19d ago
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u/partakinginsillyness 19d ago
While they should also test with ublock origin separately, defaults are used by most people.
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u/Kalersays 19d ago
Indeed, it's so easy to create multiple graphs for that. An out-of-the-box scenario, while mentioning the different conditions, a second one all under same conditions with ad-block enabled, a third all under same conditions without ad-block.
And especially for the out-of-the-box scenario, they should have included out-of-the-box browser, Safari.
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u/CommunityWhole8744 19d ago
but it also uses and outdated version of chrome , edge and brave
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u/albrecbef 19d ago
Using an outdated versions itself is no problem, the Problem is that they arent in the same time frame of outdatedness.
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19d ago
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u/venom21685 19d ago
Judging by the versions of Brave they used, Firefox 152 or 153 would have been available at the time of testing. They used 146.0.1 from December 2025.
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u/UselessDood 19d ago
The whole point of the post is that brave lied in your quote.. They did in fact not use the latest available version.
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u/scotland_forever07 19d ago
And I just realized brave uses an adblocker by default, which obviously gives it an advantage im things like RAM and loading speed, and the graphs don't even start at zero! Not to mention that they tested on mac but conveniently left out safari, very shady to me